Villette quotes

I believe she then plainly saw events coming, whose very shadow I scarce guessed; yet of which the faint suspicion sufficed to impart unsettled sadness, and made me glad to change scene and society.

Time always flowed smoothly for me at my godmother’s side; not with tumultuous swiftness, but blandly, like the gliding of a full river through a plain.

My visits to her resembled the sojourn of Christian and Hopeful beside a certain pleasant stream, with “green trees on each bank, and meadows beautified with lilies all the year round.” The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident;

But I did take notice: I watched Polly rest her small elbow on her small knee, her head on her hand; I observed her draw a square inch or two of pocket-handkerchief from the doll-pocket of her doll-skirt, and then I heard her weep.

Other children in grief or pain cry aloud, without shame or restraint; but this being wept: the tiniest occasional sniff testified to her emotion.

Mrs. Bretton did not hear it: which was quite as well. Ere long, a voice, issuing from the corner, demanded—

He kissed her. I wished she would utter some hysterical cry, so that I might get relief and be at ease. She made wonderfully little noise: she seemed to have got what she wanted—all she wanted, and to be in a trance of content.

Neither in mien nor in features was this creature like her sire, and yet she was of his strain: her mind had been filled from his, as the cup from the flagon.

Indisputably, Mr. Home owned manly self-control, however he might secretly feel on some matters. “Polly,” he said, looking down on his little girl, “go into the hall; you will see papa’s greatcoat lying on a chair;

“You certainly wished to enjoy the pleasure of my society. You knew I was coming home, and would wait to have a look at me.”

“I sat up for papa, and not for you.”

“Very good, Miss Home. I am going to be a favourite: preferred before papa soon, I daresay.”

Graham, coming in soon after, observed to his mother—

“Mamma, I believe that creature is a changeling: she is a perfect cabinet of oddities; but I should be dull without her: she amuses me a great deal more than you or Lucy Snowe.”

“Miss Snowe,” said Paulina to me (she had now got into the habit of occasionally chatting with me when we were alone in our room at night), “do you know on what day in the week I like Graham best?”

“I’ve spoilt her,” said he, taking her from me with good humour, and kissing her little hot face and burning lips. “Polly, you care for me more than for papa, now—”

“I do care for you, but you care nothing for me,” was her whisper.

She was assured to the contrary, again kissed, restored to me, and I carried her away; but, alas! not soothed.

“A very unique child,” thought I, as I viewed her sleeping countenance by the fitful moonlight, and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering eyelids and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief.

“How will she get through this world, or battle with this life? How will she bear the shocks and repulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?”

She departed the next day; trembling like a leaf when she took leave, but exercising self-command.

buried, if you will, in a long prayer. A great many women and girls are supposed to pass their lives something in that fashion; why not I with the rest?

Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft.

However, it cannot be concealed that, in that case, I must somehow have fallen overboard, or that there must have been wreck at last. I too well remember a time—a long time—of cold, of danger, of contention.

My little morsel of human affection, which I prized as if it were a solid pearl, must melt in my fingers and slip thence like a dissolving hailstone. My small adopted duty must be snatched from my easily contented conscience.

I had wanted to compromise with Fate to escape occasional great agonies by submitting to a whole life of privation and small pains.

Fate would not so be pacified; nor would Providence sanction this shrinking sloth and cowardly indolence.

Some new power it seemed to bring. I drew in energy with the keen, low breeze that blew on its path. A bold thought was sent to my mind; my mind was made strong to receive it.

“Leave this wilderness,” it was said to me, “and go out hence.”

I had not very far to look; gazing from this country parish in that flat, rich middle of England—I mentally saw within reach what I had never yet beheld with my bodily eyes: I saw London.

I regarded it as a brief holiday, permitted for once to work-weary faculties, rather than as an adventure of life and death.

There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate: it keeps mind and body tranquil; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever.

Fifty miles were then a day’s journey (for I speak of a time gone by: my hair, which, till a late period, withstood the frosts of time, lies now, at last white, under a white cap, like snow beneath snow).

Above my head, above the housetops, co-elevate almost with the clouds, I saw a solemn, orbed mass, dark blue and dim—The Dome.

While I looked, my inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life.

In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s gourd.

my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose; I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life. In that morning my soul grew as fast as Jonah’s gourd.

“I did well to come,” I said, proceeding to dress with speed and care. “I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and forever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?”

Being dressed, I went down; not travel-worn and exhausted, but tidy and refreshed. When the waiter came in with my breakfast, I managed to accost him sedately, yet cheerfully;

but I love the city far better. The city seems so much more in earnest; its business, its rush, its roar, are such serious things, sights, and sounds. The city is getting its living—the West End but enjoying its pleasure.

At the West End you may be amused, but in the city you are deeply excited.

Faint, at last, and hungry (it was years since I had felt such healthy hunger), I returned, about two o’clock, to my dark, old, and quiet inn. I dined on two dishes—a plain joint and vegetables; both seemed excellent:

for the owner of the boat I had chosen became now an ally: I was rowed off.

Black was the river as a torrent of ink; lights glanced on it from the piles of building round, ships rocked on its bosom.

They rowed me up to several vessels; I read by lantern-light their names painted in great white letters on a dark ground. The Ocean, The Phoenix, The Consort, The Dolphin, were passed in turns;

Yet where should I go? I must go somewhere.

Necessity dare not be nice.

As I gave the stewardess her fee—and she seemed surprised at receiving a coin of more value than, from such a quarter, her coarse calculations had probably reckoned on—I said, “Be kind enough to direct me to some quiet, respectable inn, where I can go …

I started. About a hundred thoughts volleyed through my mind in a moment. Yet I planned nothing, and considered nothing: I had not time.

Providence said, “Stop here; this is your inn.” Fate took me in her strong hand; mastered my will; directed my actions: I rang the doorbell.

While I waited, I would not reflect. I fixedly looked at the street-stones, where the door-lamp shone, and counted them and noted their shapes, and the glitter of wet on their angles. I rang again. They opened at last.

In philanthropic schemes for the benefit of society at large she took a cheerful part; no private sorrow touched her: no force or mass of suffering concentrated in one heart had power to pierce hers.

Not the agony in Gethsemane, not the death on Calvary, could have wrung from her eyes one tear.

I say again, Madame was a very great and a very capable woman. That school offered her for her powers too limited a sphere; she ought to have swayed a nation: she should have been the leader of a turbulent legislative assembly.

“But Fifine wants it, Madame.”

“Fifine must want it, then, for I want you.”

And as Madame Beck did really want and was resolved to have me—as she had long been dissatisfied with the English master, with his shortcomings in punctuality, and his careless method of tuition—as, too, she did not lack resolution and practical activity, whether I lacked …

She sneered slightly in saying this—nervous excitability was not much to Madame’s taste.

“I am no more excited than this stone,” I said, tapping the flag with my toe: “or than you,” I added, returning her look.

“Bon! But let me tell you these are not quiet, decorous, English girls you are going to encounter. Ce sont des Labassecouriennes, rondes, franches, brusques, et tant soit peu rebelles.”

The opinion of my Catholic acquaintance concerning my spiritual prospects was somewhat naively expressed to me on one occasion. A pensionnaire, to whom I had rendered some little service, exclaimed one day as she sat beside me:

“Mademoiselle, what a pity you are a Protestant!”

“Parceque, quand vous serez morte—vous brûlerez tout de suite dans l’Enfer.”

“Without being certain that you will be permitted to marry him?”

“Oh, how dowdyish you are! I don’t want to be married. I am too young.”

“But if he loves you as much as you say, and yet it comes to nothing in the end, he will be made miserable.”

“But if he loves you as much as you say, and yet it comes to nothing in the end, he will be made miserable.”

“Of course he will break his heart. I should be shocked and, disappointed if he didn’t.”

“I wonder whether this M. Isidore is a fool?” said I.

“Mais pas du tout!” (she always had recourse to French when about to say something specially heartless and perverse).

“Je suis sa reine, mais il n’est pas mon roi.”

“Excuse me, I must believe this language is mere nonsense and coquetry. There is nothing great about you, yet you are above profiting by the good nature and purse of a man to whom you feel absolute indifference. You love M.

… puzzle over his countenance and movements, and wonder what could be the meaning of that peculiar interest and attachment—all mixed up with doubt and strangeness, and inexplicably ruled by some presiding spell—which wedded him to this demi-convent, secluded in the built-up core of a capital.

He, I believe, never remembered that I had eyes in my head, much less a brain behind them.

Nor would he ever have found this out, but that one day, while he sat in the sunshine and I was observing the colouring of his hair, whiskers, and complexion—the whole being of such a tone as a strong light brings out with somewhat perilous …

I was not in the habit of speaking to him. Suffering him, then, to think what he chose and accuse me of what he would, I resumed some work I had dropped, and kept my head bent over it during the remainder of his stay.

There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored.

What honest man, on being casually taken for a housebreaker, does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?

There is a perverse mood of the mind which is rather soothed than irritated by misconstruction; and in quarters where we can never be rightly known, we take pleasure, I think, in being consummately ignored.

What honest man, on being casually taken for a housebreaker, does not feel rather tickled than vexed at the mistake?

One single white hair streaked her nut-brown tresses; she plucked it out with a shudder. In the full summer daylight, her face, though it still had the colour, could plainly be seen to have lost the texture of youth; and then, where were youth’s contours?

Ah, Madame! wise as you were, even you knew weakness.

Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come upon her. That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly “All-hail,” and her soul rejected the intimacy.

and then, where were youth’s contours? Ah, Madame! wise as you were, even you knew weakness. Never had I pitied Madame before, but my heart softened towards her, when she turned darkly from the glass. A calamity had come upon her.

That hag Disappointment was greeting her with a grisly “All-hail,” and her soul rejected the intimacy.

But Rosine! My bewilderment there surpasses description. I embraced five opportunities of passing her cabinet that day, with a view to contemplating her charms, and finding out the secret of their influence. She was pretty, young, and wore a well-made dress.

Oh, my childhood!

I had feelings; passive as I lived, little as I spoke, cold as I looked, when I thought of past days, I could feel.

About the present, it was better to be stoical; about the future—such a future as mine—to be dead. And in catalepsy and a dead trance, I studiously held the quick of my nature.

This longing, and all of a similar kind, it was necessary to knock on the head; which I did, figuratively, after the manner of Jael to Sisera, driving a nail through their temples.

Unlike Sisera, they did not die: they were but transiently stunned, and at intervals would turn on the nail with a rebellious wrench; then did the temples bleed, and the brain thrill to its core.

Tonight, I was not so mutinous, nor so miserable. My Sisera lay quiet in the tent, slumbering;

and truly I liked Madame for her capital sense, whatever I might think of her principles: as to her system, it did me no harm; she might work me with it to her heart’s content: nothing would come of the operation.

Loverless and inexpectant of love, I was as safe from spies in my heart-poverty, as the beggar from thieves in his destitution of purse.

I turned, then, and fled; descending the stairs with progress as swift and soundless as that of the spider, which at the same instant ran down the bannister.

Tonight she would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her little arms round my neck. Her clasp, and the nestling action with which she pressed her cheek to mine, made me almost cry with a tender pain.

Feeling of no kind abounded in that house; this pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart, and sent a gush to the eyes.

Half an hour or an hour passed; Georgette murmured in her soft lisp that she was growing sleepy. “And you shall sleep,” thought I, “malgré maman and médecin, if they are not here in ten minutes.”

A strange, frolicsome, noisy little world was this school: great pains were taken to hide chains with flowers: a subtle essence of Romanism pervaded every arrangement: large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint.

Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of.

There, as elsewhere, the Church strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning. “Eat, drink, and live!” she says. “Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure—guide their course:

large sensual indulgence (so to speak) was permitted by way of counterpoise to jealous spiritual restraint. Each mind was being reared in slavery; but, to prevent reflection from dwelling on this fact, every pretext for physical recreation was seized and made the most of.

There, as elsewhere, the Church strove to bring up her children robust in body, feeble in soul, fat, ruddy, hale, joyous, ignorant, unthinking, unquestioning.

“Eat, drink, and live!” she says. “Look after your bodies; leave your souls to me. I hold their cure—guide their course: I guarantee their final fate.” A bargain, in which every true Catholic deems himself a gainer. Lucifer just offers the same terms:

it was well she took this view of the matter, for I had no flower, no jewel to relieve it; and, what was more, I had no natural rose of complexion.

We become oblivious of these deficiencies in the uniform routine of daily drudgery, but they will force upon us their unwelcome blank on those bright occasions when beauty should shine.

However, in this same gown of shadow, I felt at home and at ease; an advantage I should not have enjoyed in anything more brilliant or striking. Madame Beck, too, kept me in countenance;

At all ordinary diet and plain beverage she would pout; but she fed on creams and ices like a hummingbird on honey-paste: sweet wine was her element, and sweet cake her daily bread.

Ginevra lived her full life in a ballroom; elsewhere she drooped dispirited.

Think not, reader, that she thus bloomed and sparkled for the mere sake of M.

“Taisez-vous!” Madame would reply, heroically and inexorably. “Vous ne passerez pas à moins que ce ne soit sur mon cadavre, et vous ne danserez qu’avec la nonnette du jardin” (alluding to the legend).

And she majestically walked to and fro along their disconsolate and impatient line, like a little Bonaparte in a mouse-coloured silk gown.

Madame knew something of the world; Madame knew much of human nature. I don’t think that another directress in Villette would have dared to admit a jeune homme within her walls;

And she majestically walked to and fro along their disconsolate and impatient line, like a little Bonaparte in a mouse-coloured silk gown.

Madame knew something of the world; Madame knew much of human nature.

I don’t think that another directress in Villette would have dared to admit a jeune homme within her walls; but Madame knew that by granting such admission, on an occasion like the present, a bold stroke might be struck, and a great point gained.

you have no relations; you can’t call yourself young at twenty-three; you have no attractive accomplishments—no beauty. As to admirers, you hardly know what they are; you can’t even talk on the subject: you sit dumb when the other teachers quote their conquests.

I believe you never were in love, and never will be: you don’t know the feeling, and so much the better, for though you might have your own heart broken, no living heart will you ever break.

Isn’t it all true?”

I speak of the case as it stood. On me school-triumphs shed but a cold lustre. I had wondered—and I wondered now—how it was that for him they seemed to shine as with hearth-warmth and hearth-glow.

He cared for them perhaps too much; I, probably, too little.

However, I had my own fancies as well as he. I liked, for instance, to see M. Emanuel jealous; it lit up his nature, and woke his spirit;

M. Paul was as good as his word, and did his best to make my part easy. The next day came the distribution of prizes; that also passed; the school broke up; the pupils went home, and now began the long vacation.

That vacation! Shall I ever forget it? I think not.

Madame Beck went, the first day of the holidays, to join her children at the seaside; all the three teachers had parents or friends with whom they took refuge; every professor quitted the city; some went to Paris, some to Boue-Marine; M.

the dumb future spoke no comfort, offered no promise, gave no inducement to bear present evil in reliance on future good. A sorrowful indifference to existence often pressed on me—a despairing resignation to reach betimes the end of all things earthly.

Alas! When I had full leisure to look on life as life must be looked on by such as me, I found it but a hopeless desert: tawny sands, with no green fields, no palm-tree, no well in view.

The hopes which are dear to youth, which bear it up and lead it on, I knew not and dared not know. If they knocked at my heart sometimes, an inhospitable bar to admission must be inwardly drawn.

Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell.

Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence.

He and his mother also drew to the fire, and ere we had sat ten minutes, I caught the eye of the latter fastened steadily upon me.

Women are certainly quicker in some things than men.

“Well,” she exclaimed, presently, “I have seldom seen a stronger likeness! Graham, have you observed it?”

But so courageous a mother, with such a champion in her son, was well fitted to fight a good fight with the world, and to prevail ultimately. Dr. John himself was one of those on whose birth benign planets have certainly smiled.

Adversity might set against him her most sullen front: he was the man to beat her down with smiles.

Strong and cheerful, and firm and courteous; not rash, yet valiant; he was the aspirant to woo Destiny herself, and to win from her stone eyeballs a beam almost loving.

These struggles with the natural character, the strong native bent of the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the end they do good.

They tend, however slightly, to give the actions, the conduct, that turn which Reason approves, and which Feeling, perhaps, too often opposes:

in some shape, though perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart loved, and for which it bled, the healing herald will descend, the cripple and the blind, and the dumb, and the possessed will be led to bathe.

Herald, come quickly! Thousands lie round the pool, weeping and despairing, to see it, through slow years, stagnant.

Long are the “times” of Heaven: the orbits of angel messengers seem wide to mortal vision; they may enring ages: the cycle of one departure and return may clasp unnumbered generations;

It is rather a manoir than a château; they call it ‘La Terrasse,’ because its front rises from a broad turfed walk, whence steps lead down a grassy slope to the avenue. See yonder! The moon rises: she looks well through the tree-boles.”

Where, indeed, does the moon not look well? What is the scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow?

Rosy or fiery, she mounted now above a not distant bank; even while we watched her flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, and in very brief space, floated up stainless into a now calm sky. Did moonlight soften or sadden Dr. Bretton?

“Which disables me from helping you by pill or potion.

Medicine can give nobody good spirits.

My art halts at the threshold of Hypochondria: she just looks in and sees a chamber of torture, but can neither say nor do much. Cheerful society would be of use; you should be as little alone as possible; you should take plenty of exercise.”

and because I have admitted that he was not endowed with the other in equal degree, the reader will considerately refrain from passing to an extreme, and pronouncing him un-sympathizing, unfeeling: on the contrary, he was a kind, generous man.

Make your need known, his hand was open. Put your grief into words, he turned no deaf ear.

Expect refinements of perception, miracles of intuition, and realize disappointment. This night, when Dr. John entered the room, and met the evening lamp, I saw well and at one glance his whole mechanism.

“I am your sincere well-wisher: you are right.”

Reader, if in the course of this work, you find that my opinion of Dr. John undergoes modification, excuse the seeming inconsistency. I give the feeling as at the time I felt it; I describe the view of character as it appeared when discovered.

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations;

broad daylight blazed round her; she appeared in hearty health, strong enough to do the work of two plain cooks; she could not plead a weak spine; she ought to have been standing, or at least sitting bolt upright.

She, had no business to lounge away the noon on a sofa.

She ought likewise to have worn decent garments; a gown covering her properly, which was not the case: out of abundance of material—seven-and-twenty yards, I should say, of drapery—she managed to make inefficient raiment.

I assured him plainly I could not agree in this doctrine, and did not see the sense of it; whereupon, with his usual absolutism, he merely requested my silence, and also, in the same breath, denounced my mingled rashness and ignorance.

A more despotic little man than M. Paul never filled a professor’s chair.

I noticed, by the way, that he looked at the picture himself quite at his ease, and for a very long while:

“

Women who are worthy the name ought infinitely to surpass our coarse, fallible, self-indulgent sex, in the power to perform such duties.

”

“Mademoiselle,” he said, grimacing a half-smile, or what he intended for a smile, though it was but a grim and hurried manifestation. “

You nurslings of Protestantism astonish me. You unguarded Englishwomen walk calmly amidst red-hot ploughshares and escape burning.

I believe, if some of you were thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace you would issue forth untraversed by the smell of fire.”

But the impression was hardly felt and not fixed, before the consciousness that I faced a great mirror, filling a compartment between two pillars, dispelled it: the party was our own party.

Thus for the first, and perhaps only time in my life, I enjoyed the “gift” of seeing myself as others see me.

No need to dwell on the result. It brought a jar of discord, a pang of regret; it was not flattering, yet, after all, I ought to be thankful; it might have been worse.

Then ensued a little combat of words. Mrs. Bretton and her son pressed me to remain one night more. I could have cried, so irritated and eager was I to be gone.

I longed to leave them as the criminal on the scaffold longs for the axe to descend: that is, I wished the pang over.

How much I wished it, they could not tell. On these points, mine was a state of mind out of their experience.

We shall and must break bounds at intervals, despite the terrible revenge that awaits our return.

Reason is vindictive as a devil: for me, she was always envenomed as a stepmother.

If I have obeyed her it has chiefly been with the obedience of fear, not of love. Long ago I should have died of her ill-usage: her stint, her chill, her barren board, her icy bed, her savage, ceaseless blows;

I awoke with a sort of start; the rain was dashing against the panes, and the wind uttering a peevish cry at intervals; the night-lamp was dying on the black circular stand in the middle of the dormitory, day had already broken.

How I pity those whom mental pain stuns instead of rousing!

This morning the pang of waking snatched me out of bed like a hand with a giant’s grip. How quickly I dressed in the cold of the raw dawn! How deeply I drank of the ice-cold water in my carafe!

Appliquée, indeed! The means of application were spread before me, but I was doing nothing, and had done nothing, and meant to do nothing.

Thus does the world give us credit for merits we have not.

Madame Beck herself deemed me a regular bas-bleu, and often and solemnly used to warn me not to study too much, lest “the blood should all go to my head.” Indeed, everybody in the Rue Fossette held a superstition that “Meess Lucie” was learned;

his hand, as quick, had snatched it up. He had hidden it in his waistcoat pocket. If my trouble had wrought with a whit less stress and reality, I doubt whether he would ever have acknowledged or restored it.

Tears of temperature one degree cooler than those I shed would only have amused Dr. John.

Pleasure at regaining made me forget merited reproach for the teasing torment; my joy was great; it could not be concealed; yet I think it broke out more in countenance than language. I said little.

“Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive—cultivate both.”

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness.

What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven.

No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such advice mean?

Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of Heaven.

She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.

No; the weakness of that word would make it a lie. To her, what hurts becomes immediately embodied; she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with abstractions.

Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence.

Pain, for her, has no result in good; tears water no harvest of wisdom; on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel. Wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong;

she looks on it as a thing that can be attacked, worried down, torn in shreds. Scarcely a substance herself, she grapples to conflict with abstractions. Before calamity she is a tigress; she rends her woes, shivers them in convulsed abhorrence.

Pain, for her, has no result in good; tears water no harvest of wisdom; on sickness, on death itself, she looks with the eye of a rebel.

Wicked, perhaps, she is, but also she is strong; and her strength has conquered Beauty, has overcome Grace, and bound both at her side, captives peerlessly fair, and docile as fair.

Even in the uttermost frenzy of energy is each maenad movement royally, imperially, incedingly upborne. Her hair, flying loose in revel or war, is still an angel’s hair, and glorious under a halo.

Fallen, insurgent, banished, she remembers the heaven where she rebelled.

Heaven’s light, following her exile, pierces its confines, and discloses their forlorn remoteness.

the magian power or prophet-virtue gifting that slight rod of Moses, could, at one waft, release and re-mingle a sea spell-parted, whelming the heavy host with the down-rush of overthrown sea-ramparts.

Vashti was not good, I was told; and I have said she did not look good; though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet.

Well, if so much of unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred essence descend one day from above?

Vashti was not good, I was told; and I have said she did not look good; though a spirit, she was a spirit out of Tophet.

Well, if so much of unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred essence descend one day from above?

What thought Dr. Graham of this being?

Her agony did not pain him, her wild moan—worse than a shriek—did not much move him; her fury revolted him somewhat, but not to the point of horror.

Cool young Briton! The pale cliffs of his own England do not look down on the tides of the Channel more calmly than he watched the Pythian inspiration of that night.

Looking at his face, I longed to know his exact opinions, and at last I put a question tending to elicit them. At the sound of my voice he awoke as if out of a dream;

Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no more.

Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them.

Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life.

Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, “As well soon as syne.”

Following that eventful evening at the theatre, came for me seven weeks as bare as seven sheets of blank paper: no word was written on one of them; not a visit, not a token.

About the middle of that time I entertained fancies that something had happened to my friends at La Terrasse. The mid-blank is always a beclouded point for the solitary: his nerves ache with the strain of long expectancy;

My hour of torment was the post-hour. Unfortunately, I knew it too well, and tried as vainly as assiduously to cheat myself of that knowledge; dreading the rack of expectation, and the sick collapse of disappointment which daily preceded and followed upon that well-recognised ring.

I suppose animals kept in cages, and so scantily fed as to be always upon the verge of famine, await their food as I awaited a letter.

Oh!—to speak truth, and drop that tone of a false calm which long to sustain, outwears nature’s endurance—I underwent in those seven weeks bitter fears and pains, strange inward trials, miserable defections of hope, intolerable encroachments of despair.

But I got over that pain also.

Life is still life, whatever its pangs: our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles be quite silenced.

I opened the billet: by this time I had recognised its handwriting as perfectly familiar. It was dated “La Terrasse,” and it ran thus—

And long, long may the minds to whom such themes are no mystery—by whom their bearings are sympathetically seized—be few in number, and rare of rencounter.

Long may it be generally thought that physical privations alone merit compassion, and that the rest is a figment.

When the world was younger and haler than now, moral trials were a deeper mystery still: perhaps in all the land of Israel there was but one Saul—certainly but one David to soothe or comprehend him.

“I find it anything but sweet; it is bitter and hot, and takes away my breath.

Your old October was only desirable while forbidden.

Thank you, no more.”

But soon I said to myself,

“The Hope I am bemoaning suffered and made me suffer much: it did not die till it was full time: following an agony so lingering, death ought to be welcome.”

Welcome I endeavoured to make it. Indeed, long pain had made patience a habit. In the end I closed the eyes of my dead, covered its face, and composed its limbs with great calm.

Welcome I endeavoured to make it. Indeed, long pain had made patience a habit.

In the end I closed the eyes of my dead, covered its face, and composed its limbs with great calm.

The letters, however, must be put away, out of sight: people who have undergone bereavement always jealously gather together and lock away mementos: it is not supportable to be stabbed to the heart each moment by sharp revival of regret.

I had not that vocation. I could teach; I could give lessons; but to be either a private governess or a companion was unnatural to me.

Rather than fill the former post in any great house, I would deliberately have taken a housemaid’s place, bought a strong pair of gloves, swept bedrooms and staircases, and cleaned stoves and locks, in peace and independence.

Rather than be a companion, I would have made shirts and starved.

Rather than fill the former post in any great house, I would deliberately have taken a housemaid’s place, bought a strong pair of gloves, swept bedrooms and staircases, and cleaned stoves and locks, in peace and independence.

Rather than be a companion, I would have made shirts and starved.

I was no bright lady’s shadow—not Miss de Bassompierre’s. Overcast enough it was my nature often to be; of a subdued habit I was:

Grievous to relate, the same word was repeated, with the unequivocal addition of mille something, when I passed him about two hours afterwards in the corridor, prepared to go and take my German lesson in the Rue Crécy.

Never was a better little man, in some points, than M. Paul: never, in others, a more waspish little despot.

Our German mistress, Fräulein Anna Braun, was a worthy, hearty woman, of about forty-five; she ought, perhaps, to have lived in the days of Queen Elizabeth, as she habitually consumed, for her first and second breakfasts, beer and beef;

Well! if I blamed his over-eagerness, I liked his naivete. I would have praised him: I had plenty of praise in my heart; but, alas! no words on my lips.

Who has words at the right moment?

I stammered some lame expressions; but was truly glad when other people, coming up with profuse congratulations, covered my deficiency by their redundancy.

In Paulina there was more force, both of feeling and character, than most people thought—than Graham himself imagined—than she would ever show to those who did not wish to see it.

To speak truth, reader, there is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no reliable refinement, without strength as excellent, as complete, as trustworthy.

As well might you look for good fruit and blossom on a rootless and sapless tree, as for charms that will endure in a feeble and relaxed nature. For a little while, the blooming semblance of beauty may flourish round weakness;

a vacant space appeared near Miss de Bassompierre; the circle surrounding her seemed about to dissolve. This movement was instantly caught by Graham’s eye—ever-vigilant, even while laughing; he rose, took his courage in both hands, crossed the room, and made the advantage his own.

Dr. John, throughout his whole life, was a man of luck⁠—a man of success.

And why? Because he had the eye to see his opportunity, the heart to prompt to well-timed action, the nerve to consummate a perfect work. And no tyrant-passion dragged him back; no enthusiasms, no foibles encumbered his way.

M. Paul was still there; my ear expected from his lips an angry tone. He came nearer. “Now for another hiss!” thought I: had not the action been too uncivil I could have, stopped my ears with my fingers in terror of the thrill.

Nothing happens as we expect: listen for a coo or a murmur; it is then you will hear a cry of prey or pain.

Await a piercing shriek, an angry threat, and welcome an amicable greeting, a low kind whisper. M. Paul spoke gently—“Friends,” said he, “do not quarrel for a word. Tell me, was it I or ce grand fat d’Anglais” (so he profanely denominated Dr.

… little man—this pitiless censor—gathers up all your poor scattered sins of vanity, your luckless chiffon of rose-colour, your small fringe of a wreath, your small scrap of ribbon, your silly bit of lace, and calls you to account for the lot, and for each item.

You are well habituated to be passed by as a shadow in Life’s sunshine: it is a new thing to see one testily lifting his hand to screen his eyes, because you tease him with an obtrusive ray.

”

not a cross glance shot from his eyes, not a hasty word left his lips. Till the very close of the evening, he did not indeed address me at all, yet I felt, somehow, that he was full of friendliness.

Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings; no words could inspire a pleasanter content than did M. Paul’s worldless presence.

When the tray came in, and the bustle of supper commenced, he just said, as he retired, that he wished me a good night and sweet dreams; and a good night and sweet dreams I had.

The beginning of all effort has indeed with me been marked by a preternatural imbecility. I never could, even in forming a common acquaintance, assert or prove a claim to average quickness.

A depressing and difficult passage has prefaced every new page I have turned in life.

So long as this passage lasted, M. Paul was very kind, very good, very forbearing; he saw the sharp pain inflicted, and felt the weighty humiliation imposed by my own sense of incapacity; and words can hardly do justice to his tenderness and helpfulness.

In the beginning, before I had penetrated to motives, that uncomprehended sneer of his made my heart ache, but by-and-by it only warmed the blood in my veins, and sent added action to my pulses.

Whatever my powers⁠—feminine or the contrary⁠—God had given them, and I felt resolute to be ashamed of no faculty of his bestowal.

The combat was very sharp for a time. I seemed to have lost M. Paul’s affection; he treated me strangely. In his most unjust moments he would insinuate that I had deceived him when I appeared, what he called faible—that is incompetent;

He made his peace somehow—too readily, perhaps; I ought to have stood out longer, but when he looked kind and good, and held out his hand with amity, memory refused to reproduce with due force his oppressive moments.

And then, reconcilement is always sweet!

On a certain morning a message came from my godmother, inviting me to attend some notable lecture to be delivered in the same public rooms before described. Dr.

I find no reason why I should be of the few favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end.

I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.

”

So this subject is done with.

It is right to look our life-accounts bravely in the face now and then, and settle them honestly.

And he is a poor self-swindler who lies to himself while he reckons the items, and sets down under the head—happiness that which is misery. Call anguish—anguish, and despair—despair; write both down in strong characters with a resolute pen:

and see if your mighty creditor will allow the fraud to pass, or accept the coin with which you would cheat him. Offer to the strongest—if the darkest angel of God’s host—water, when he has asked blood—will he take it?

Not a whole pale sea for one red drop.

I settled another account.

it was a part of himself; it was the honey of his temper; it was the balm of his mellow mood; he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the rifling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their perfume.

Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is the sweetbriar enamoured of the air?

“Good night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine. Good night, and God bless you!”

he imparted it, as the ripe fruit rewards with sweetness the rifling bee; he diffused it about him, as sweet plants shed their perfume. Does the nectarine love either the bee or bird it feeds? Is the sweetbriar enamoured of the air?

“Good night, Dr. John; you are good, you are beautiful; but you are not mine. Good night, and God bless you!”

Thus I closed my musings. “Good night” left my lips in sound; I heard the words spoken, and then I heard an echo—quite close.

“No. You looked pale in your slumbers; are you homesick?”

“To be homesick, one must have a home; which I have not.”

“Then you have more need of a careful friend. I scarcely know any one, Miss Lucy, who needs a friend more absolutely than you; your very faults imperatively require it. You want so much checking, regulating, and keeping down.”

Again fell the appealing accent, and at the same instant she left her chair, and came and sat on the stool at my feet.

I liked her. It is not a declaration I have often made concerning my acquaintance, in the course of this book; the reader will bear with it for once.

Intimate intercourse, close inspection, disclosed in Paulina only what was delicate, intelligent, and sincere; therefore my regard for her lay deep. An admiration more superficial might have been more demonstrative; mine, however, was quiet.

With what a pleasant countenance he stood on the farm-kitchen hearth looking on!

He was a man whom it made happy to see others happy; he liked to have movement, animation, abundance and enjoyment round him.

We asked where he would sit. He told us, we knew well he was our slave, and we his tyrants, and that he dared not so much as choose a chair without our leave;

Well, my insane inconsistency had its reward. Instead of the comfort, the certain satisfaction, I might have won—could I but have put choking panic down, and stood firm two minutes—here was dead blank, dark doubt, and drear suspense.

I took my wages to my pillow, and passed the night counting them.

“Oubliez les Professeurs.” So said Madame Beck.

Madame Beck was a wise woman, but she should not have uttered those words.

To do so was a mistake. That night she should have left me calm—not excited, indifferent, not interested, isolated in my own estimation and that of others—not connected, even in idea, with this second person whom I was to forget.

To do so was a mistake. That night she should have left me calm—not excited, indifferent, not interested, isolated in my own estimation and that of others—not connected, even in idea, with this second person whom I was to forget.

Forget him? Ah! they took a sage plan to make me forget him⁠—the wiseheads!

They showed me how good he was; they made of my dear little man a stainless little hero. And then they had prated about his manner of loving.

“Nous agissons dans l’intérêt de la vérité. Nous ne voulons pas vous blesser,” said he.

Scorn gave me nerve.

I only answered—

He came.

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

That whole day he never accosted me. His lesson was given rather more quietly than usual, more mildly, and also more gravely. He was fatherly to his pupils, but he was not brotherly to me.

Many people—men and women—no doubt far my superiors in a thousand ways, have felt this display impressive, have declared that though their Reason protested, their Imagination was subjugated. I cannot say the same.

Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial jewellery, touched my imagination a whit.

What I saw struck me as tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual.

I cannot say the same. Neither full procession, nor high mass, nor swarming tapers, nor swinging censers, nor ecclesiastical millinery, nor celestial jewellery, touched my imagination a whit.

What I saw struck me as tawdry, not grand; as grossly material, not poetically spiritual.

This I did not tell Père Silas; he was old, he looked venerable: through every abortive experiment, under every repeated disappointment, he remained personally kind to me, and I felt tender of hurting his feelings.

“

I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.

”

“Yes; it is sadness.

Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy, lies heartbreak.

”

“Lucy, I wonder if anybody will ever comprehend you altogether.”

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

Paulina had forbidden letters, yet Dr. Bretton wrote; she had resolved against correspondence, yet she answered, were it only to chide. She showed me these letters; with something of the spoiled child’s wilfulness, and of the heiress’s imperiousness, she made me read them.

He turned, and waited till I said “Amen!”—which I did to please him: the old charm, in doing as he bid me, came back. I wished him success; and successful I knew he would be.

He was born victor, as some are born vanquished.

“Follow me!” he said; and I followed him into Mr. Home’s presence.

I waited my champion. Apollyon came trailing his Hell behind him.

I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature despair.

I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades—stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour …

mechanically had I moved aside benches and desks, and had made for myself a path down its length. There I walked, and there, when certain that the whole household were abed, and quite out of hearing—there, I at last wept.

Reliant on Night, confiding in Solitude, I kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer; they heaved my heart; they tore their way.

In this house, what grief could be sacred?

Isabelle did not long stand alone in the recommendation of ignorance; before the day was over, I gathered cause of gratitude towards the whole blind household.

The multitude have something else to do than to read hearts and interpret dark sayings.

Who wills, may keep his own counsel—be his own secret’s sovereign.

It was not known—it had not been noted—that I held in peculiar value one life among all lives. Gossip had passed me by; curiosity had looked me over; both subtle influences, hovering always round, had never become centred upon me.

A given organization may live in a full fever-hospital, and escape typhus.

M. Emanuel had come and gone: I had been taught and sought; in season and out of season he had called me, and I had obeyed him: “M. Paul wants Miss Lucy”—“Miss Lucy is with M. Paul”—such had been the perpetual bulletin;

its result was not that she intended. Instead of stupor, came excitement. I became alive to new thought—to reverie peculiar in colouring. A gathering call ran among the faculties, their bugles sang, their trumpets rang an untimely summons.

Imagination was roused from her rest, and she came forth impetuous and venturous.

With scorn she looked on Matter, her mate—“Rise!” she said. “Sluggard! this night I will have my will; nor shalt thou prevail.”

present to my mind was the sad love-story; I saw in thought the vision of the garret, the apparition of the alley, the strange birth of the berceau; I underwent a presentiment of discovery, a strong conviction of coming disclosure.

Ah! when imagination once runs riot where do we stop?

What winter tree so bare and branchless—what wayside, hedge-munching animal so humble, that Fancy, a passing cloud, and a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in spirituality, and make of it a phantom?

All falsities—all figments! We will not deal in this gear.

Let us be honest, and cut, as heretofore, from the homely web of truth.

Homely, though, is an ill-chosen word. What I see is not precisely homely. A girl of Villette stands there—a girl fresh from her pensionnat. She is very comely, with the beauty indigenous to this country. She looks well-nourished, fair, and fat of flesh.

I felt very glad now, that the drug administered in the sweet draught had filled me with a possession which made bed and chamber intolerable.

I always, through my whole life, liked to penetrate to the real truth; I like seeking the goddess in her temple, and handling the veil, and daring the dread glance.

O Titaness among deities! the covered outline of thine aspect sickens often through its uncertainty, but define to us one trait, show us one lineament, clear in awful sincerity;

we may gasp in untold terror, but with that gasp we drink in a breath of thy divinity; our heart shakes, and its currents sway like rivers lifted by earthquake, but we have swallowed strength.

To see and know the worst is to take from Fear her main advantage.

The Walravens’ party, augmented in numbers, now became very gay. The gentlemen fetched refreshments from the kiosk, all sat down on the turf under the trees; they drank healths and sentiments; they laughed, they jested. M.

High she rode, and calm and stainlessly she shone. The music and the mirth of the fête, the fire and bright hues of those lamps had outdone and outshone her for an hour, but now, again, her glory and her silence triumphed.

The rival lamps were dying: she held her course like a white fate.

Drum, trumpet, bugle, had uttered their clangour, and were forgotten; with pencil-ray she wrote on heaven and on earth records for archives everlasting. She and those stars seemed to me at once the types and witnesses of truth all regnant. The night-sky lit her reign: